Author Infomation

19 Comments

Why do people think passing laws is going to make this stuff stop? There's plenty of stuff out there that is "illegal" yet gets passed around right under the cops' noses. They can t do much about it. Passing more laws will just give people a false sense of security.

Allowing citizens to protect themselves instead of relying the police (which are rapidly shrinking due to economic problems) is one step in the right direction.

Arming everyone is not the answer. Investing in accessible mental health facilities and other social reforms is. Just look at the article about the 11 year old bringing a gun to school because he was scared after the Newtown shootings. As I've stated on other articles, Canada has more restrictive gun laws, and far fewer cases like this. Americans need to look at what other countries are doing and try to apply those ideas to their own society.

America will decide on its own without the "help" of others. Obama carried not a single precinct in Ohio outside of the big cities, but still got the states electoral vote. The assault rille ban is in effect in Connecticut, didn't do much for those dead children, making it nationwide will not help. Train and arm teachers since there is not enough money to place armed police in every school. That will leave plenty of places where licesnsed gun owners are not allowed to bring their protection, so the cowards and crazy and the gamers will still have somewhere to gun down the innocent safely.

Why do people think passing laws is going to make this stuff stop? There's plenty of stuff out there that is "illegal" yet gets passed around right under the cops' noses. They can t do much about it. Passing more laws will just give people a false sense of security.

This kind of argument really riles me. Why do we have any laws at all then?? It's an illogical argument.

Allowing citizens to protect themselves instead of relying the police (which are rapidly shrinking due to economic problems) is one step in the right direction.

This I agree with. If America is going to let absolutely anyone have a gun then you should arm everyone, including armed guards in elementary schools. The result will be worse than if no-one was armed but at least it makes sense.

After all, criminals don't care how many gun laws there are.

Sorry but again this constant use of the word "criminals" really riles me. It's used with no understanding of what it means. Calling someone like this killer a criminal is wrong. He was probably so far removed form reality that he had no understanding of the concept of "crime" or "society".

It doesn't matter if people who knowingly break the law care how many gun laws there are, it matter whether restriction on ownership hinders or demotivates their ability and desire to get their hands on one. Muggers or thieves carry guns because they expect whoever they're attacking to have one too, not because they actually want to get in a shoot out and die.

Gun control will not work unless there is a commitment to wider social responsibility. This idea is antithetical to the American ideal. The US is a country of individualists who bristle at the thought of wider public responsibility to social well being; the debate around access to public healthcare is just one example. America is also a country founded on and obsessed by violence; from the genocide of the North American Indian onward. Violence is ubiquitous in the media - the average kid has witnessed in excess of 8000 murders on tv by the time they reach adolescence; and violence is what drives their foreign policy, the US has had in excess of 50 armed conflicts since the end of WWII in a perverse obsession to empire and hegemonic control.

So I don't have much hope that the US can get on top of the senseless bloodshed. Guns and violence as conflict resolution are too entrenched culturally, its symptomatic of a greater cultural malaise. But if they could have this discussion with themselves; there is more then enough evidence that less guns = less gun crime. Just yesterday the BBC ran a story on Australia's crack down on gun ownership following a mass shooting in Port Arthur, 16 years ago. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20765259

The government responded by banning rapid fire weapons and making it mandatory to register all guns. They also offered a gun buy back program in which they collected close to 700 000 guns.
In the 18 years prior to this, there were 13 mass shootings; in the 16 years since there has been 0 (zero)

oikawa, I agree with you. With liberals in charge, there is no point in having laws. Nothing is anybody's fault, it's some outside influence, right? Until liberals pull thier heads out of thier a$$e$ and grasp the concept of personal responsiblity, nothing will change. You don't think the shooter was a criminal? He didn't understand what he was doing was wrong? You're the perfect example of the problem.

“No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction,” Obama said in surprisingly bold remarks.

Seriously Obama? You seriously want to set the bar at eliminating all evil and all violence in the world with a single law? Naturally you conclude that it's impossible. I don't buy it, this is nothing more than naked defeatism. Time's man of the year? More like wimp of the year.

I'd start with beefing up the police force, it would increase employment and help the economy. Not enough money in the budget? Well try cutting down on invading 3rd world countries, that should help the budget. Next try improving education in the U.S. and mental health care (the fact that most states let anyone with a sharpie and a piece of paper put up a sign calling themselves psychologists is RIDICULOUS).

Those are good starting points. Stop being such a wimp Obama. Get out there and do something. If can't stand the heat... then GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN!

Obama can't do a thing about the lone psycopath, it is why he is turning it over to Biden. Problem it, they are letting the antigun groups hijack this killing to promote their agenda of gun bans. It wont' work anymore than banning cars, and knives that could be used to run over kids or stab them. Some things we are just not in control of. Guns in the hands of honest citizens have provided comfort and security to countless millions, the lone psycopath shouldn't be used as an excuse to change that.

sketching over the fact that thousands of U.S. kids die in gun violence.

You need to back this up with facts, this statement is just not true.

Actually, I have no problem believing that quote. Just last week a teenage girl was murdered while getting on a bus in DC. The thinking is that it was a gang-related shooting and the actual target was the guy in front of her on the steps to the bus. That's one kid on one day. You're claiming that that hasn't happened thousands of times?

Here's a FACT for you:

In 2000, 1,242 children in the United States died from intentional firearm-related injuries. Homicides of children are most often murders of teens by other teens.

That's only in ONE year and only deals with INTENTIONAL shootings. Add in accidental killings and then add in the years since 2000 and I GUARANTEE you will reach a number equating to "thousands of kids dying from gun violence". So the statement is VERY true no matter how hard you want to disbelieve.

What needs to happen is for the second amendment get changed. It needs to be re-worded to take into account the realities of the 21st century. Just because it was part of the “Bill of Rights”, people have this idea that the first twelve amendments are inviolate. They AREN'T. They can be amended just like THEY were used to amend the original Constitution. When the second amendment was written, the only "arms" in existence were bladed/pointed weapons and muzzle-loading flintlock rifles and pistols. That group of weapons is now dwarfed by the types of weapons considered "arms" these days.

The second amendment needs to be changed not only to better define why it is in the Constitution (we don't use armed militias any more) but to better define which "arms" out of all the thousands of types available we as citizens have a right to own without fear of Congress taking them away.

I am sure that if you add up all of the yearly gun related deaths in the G7 countries OTHER THAN the US they will be less than 20% of that of the US. Why is it that a country [the U.S.A] whose people feel like they are the best in this "GOD DAMN WORLD" and have "THE GOD DAMN RIGHT TO CARRY GUNS" acting like such savages?!? You'd think that there would be enough people sick of these killings by now that an end would come to ban guns and assault rifles. The U.S. needs to rethink how it handles these problems or change their flag to contain two lawyers holding guns pointed at each other with a book titled FREEDOM shot to pieces between them. So free yet so imprisoned by their own stupidity.